There's a new and rapidly spreading cultural virus ripping through the British Isles. The symptoms of those infected include attacks of optimism, strong feelings of community, and lowered stress levels. Will their gathering in August at the Grand Canyon be the Woodstock of the '90s?

By Jules Marshall

A new and contagious cultural virus is ripping through the British
Isles, a meme, an "idea with attitude." Like all successful memes, it
confers advantages on its host: Those infected suffer attacks of
optimism, strong feelings of community, lowered stress levels, and
outbreaks of "pronoia" - the sneaking feeling one has that others are
conspiring behind your back to help you.

If these were not sufficient to ensure the meme's continued spread in this
mutating, anxiety-inducing age of ours, add the effects of unselfconscious
dancing till dawn, a strong dose of underground hipness, and a belief that
technology can - indeed, should - be put to the furtherance of hedonistic
and spiritual goals. What we have here is a major player in the
premillennial cultural meme pool, and a loose-knit movement of folks who
aim to change the world - while having the best time of their lives.
Cyber-crusties, techno-hippies, post-ravers - the British media have tried
pinning various compound names to its members.

But one name stands out, maybe because it was designed to. And for the
moment it's sticking: zippies. It stands for Zen-inspired professional
pagans, according to 50-year-old Fraser Clark, shamanic zippie
spokesperson, club manager and editor of Encyclopedia Psychedelica (EPi),
the magazine that first identified the "hippies with zip." According to
EPi, a zippie is "someone who has balanced their hemispheres to achieve a
fusion of the technological and the spiritual. The techno-person
understands that rationality, organization, long-term planning,
consistency and single-mindedness are necessary to achieve anything solid
on the material level. The hippie understands that vision, individuality,
spontaneity, flexibility and open-mindedness are crucial to realize
anything on the spiritual scale."

Zippies are an unlikely fusion between the two sides. They are the product
of UK dance-scene hedonism, cyber street tech, pagan spirituality,
postpunk anarchism, and go-for-it entrepreneurism. As a movement, the
zippie scene might never have passed childhood to reach its current state
of maturity had Margaret "Nanny" Thatcher not been determined to beat some
values (hers) into two very different (to the point of mutual antipathy)
groups of recalcitrant citizens. These were folks who refused to bend the
knee: so-called New Age travellers (or crusties) and ravers (house music
enthusiasts).

Now, the zippies are planning the most radical musical invasion of America
since the Beatles and the Stones first kicked up the shit 30 years ago.
More radical in fact, since what is being offered is an entire cultural
attitude, a postcyberpunk, postconsumerist way of life. If you've got
nothing better to do (and who does?!), plan on heading to the Grand Canyon
this August. Woodstock revivals won't hold a candle to the zippie invasion
of 1994.

Travelling Blues

Throughout the '80s, the travellers - basically a seminomadic cross
between a Gypsy and a hippie - suffered systematic state brutality on a
scale not witnessed in Britain in decades. The most famous incident was
the Beanfield Massacre in 1985, where several hundred travellers were
driven into a field near Stonehenge by police and army, their ancient
lorries and caravans trashed, pets rounded up and destroyed, children and
women harassed, and all men beaten and arrested.

This incident was not without prelude. In the late '60s, a free rock
festival was held annually at Windsor, just outside London. By 1971 this
had become so popular and was considered so close to the capital as to be
a major source of anxiety to the government. The police banned the
festival, and the people associated with it looked elsewhere to continue
the tradition. They chose Stonehenge: It is miles from anywhere, it is one
of the most revered sites in Europe, and it provides a killer backdrop
for a rock festival.

Fraser Clark went to Stonehenge in the early 1970s. "I kind of came 'round
the corner expecting to see a communal food tent and a few hippies, but
there in front of me was what looked like the whole Cherokee nation:
teepees as far as the eye could see."

The festival, designed to coincide with the summer solstice, rapidly
extended into a monthlong love-in, police-free zone, and proto-anarchist
community. Travellers formed convoys of up to 100 lorries to move around
the country afterwards, from fair to fair selling food, crafts, and drugs
as they went. "It was a pretty lawless place," says Clark. The cops never
came - if they did, a bunch of kids would immediately turn over their
vans. There was every drug under the sun openly available - but it really
worked, and people started to think, 'What the fuck do we need the
government for anyway?'
"

Jules Marshall (jules@mediamatic.hacktic.nl) is an editor of Mediamatic, an Amsterdam-based techno-culture magazine. He thanks to Karen, Amanda, Mark, and Emily for floor space; and Jennifer at Club Dog.